Friday, January 29, 2010

Shepard Library Updates

The latest on the Thomas Shepard book-sleuthing project:

- A third post from Steve Ferguson at Princeton giving the census as of 28 January (we've now identified more than 100 Shepard titles at various libraries, plus some other untraced ones). Steve also comments here on inscriptions and notational marks, text summaries inserted in the books, shorthand marks, and some other outstanding questions.

- A third post from me at The Beehive, outlining a new MHS find in an interleaved almanac used as a diary by Thomas Shepard III: a list of books received by him from the estate of his friend Daniel Russell, who died of smallpox in early 1678/9. Two of those books have now been located at Princeton.

- And I've begun a Thomas Shepard library catalog at LibraryThing as part of the Libraries of Early America series. That includes most of the books we know of so far, with the notable exception of the Princeton holdings (which will be added shortly). We're also set to track down another series of Shepard books (the exact number isn't clear yet) that are probably in the Thomas Prince collection now at the Boston Public Library. We know from the current Prince copy of one book that he had previously owned the Shepard copy but acquired a better one, and it seems that he owned at least one more as well (two other known Shepard books, one at MHS and one at AAS, are also signed by Prince).

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About Me

Reviews of books old and new; news and commentary on book history, library culture, digital humanities, archives and related subjects. Written by Jeremy Dibbell, a bibliophile, haunter of used bookstores, and Director of Communications and Outreach for Rare Book School. Email: philobiblos@gmail.com.